As the trend of miniaturization in the field of semiconductor manufacturing continues, new challenges arise in maintaining acceptable productions yields. In particular, many semiconductor devices such as SRAM devices rely on complimentary components, that is, components that must be processed (e.g. doped) separately within a device. One such example would be nFET and pFET transistors, which are implanted with different species during the semiconductor fabrication process. The nFET and pFET devices are typically separated by a shallow trench isolation (STI) region. For the purposes of improving the circuit density, it is desirable to minimize the width of the STI region. However, as the width of the STI region decreases, there is a greater chance for an unintended polysilicon stringer to form above the STI region, thereby electrically shorting the components on each side of the STI region, and causing a fatal defect within the semiconductor device. Therefore, what is needed is a semiconductor fabrication process overcomes these issues, while not requiring an increase in the width of the STI region.